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Establishing the 




American Colonial System 




in the Old Northwest 




By 




Elbert Jay Benton 






^^ 
















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^^^^ 


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Reprinted from the Transactions of the Illinois State Historical 




Society, 1918 


' 


[Printed by authority of the State of Illinois. 1 



Establishing the 

American Colonial System 

in the Old Northwest 



By 

Elbert Jay Benton 




Reprinted from the Transactions of the IlHnois State Historical 

Society, 1918 



[Printed by authority of the State of Illinois.] 






,-tass^^as^ 



Springfield. III. 

Illinois State Journal Co.. Statu Peintbrs. 

19 19 

14947 — 50 



■Rir Twintif (Sr 



NOV 25 1921 .\^S 



«v 






ESTABLISHING THE AMERICAN COLONIAL SYSTEM IN 
THE OLD NORTHWEST. 



(By Elbert Jay Benton.) 

The occasion of the Illinois Centennial is an auspicious time to 
pay tribute to the great achievement in American history during the 
infancy of the communities which form the group of states of the Old 
Xorthwest. That achievement is the establishment of the American 
Colonial System. It is not intended to raise the question of the Con- 
gressional History of the Ordinances which foi-mnlated it. That phase 
of the story may rest as it has been recorded.^ The problem now essayed 
is to trace the actnal process of establishing the peculiar American 
mode of dealing with frontier communities. It was one thing for 
Congress to lay down in a scries of Ordinances the outline of a plan of 
government for the western domain, it was another for officials to carry 
it out in practice — to overcome the barriers to its application in a 
geographically remote wilderness. It is, indeed, the appearance of these 
barriers and their overcoming by territorial authorities which con- 
stitutes the main problem of this study. 

The United States acquired so far as international relations were 
concerned a title to the Xorthwest Territory in the treaty which closed 
the Eevolution. The national government still had two rival con- 
testants in the field: some of the older states thought their territories 
swept across the Mississippi Valley in wide belts; and there were the 
Indian occupants. The former was easily disposed of, thanks to eight 
3'ears of cooperation in a common cause and the conciliatory 
spirit abroad immediately after the Eevolution. The deed of cession 
of Virginia, ]\rarch 1, 1784, finally gave the United States title to a 
large strip north of the Ohio Eiver. New York had yielded a more 
shadowy claim to the same region three years earlier. Deeds of cession 
by Massachusetts, April 19, 1785, and by Connecticut, May 28, 1786, 
extended the national jurisdiction until it covered the whole of the 
Northwest, except Connecticut's western reserve along the south shore 
of Lake Erie. These cessions were the first price which states with west- 
em claims paid for Union. 

The other western problem at the outset was to acquire from tlie 
Indian occupants treaties ceding their claims to such portions as were 
wanted for immediate colonization. The United States dealt with 
the Indian as semi-dependent nations. The Congress of the period 
went about the task quite logically. It began by creating a commission 

^ McLaughlin, Confederation and the Constitution, ch.s. 7, 8 : Channing, IV, 
ch. 17 ; Barrett. Evolution of the Ordinance of 1787. Archer B. Hulbert, The 
Records of the Ohio Company, has Riven a fresh account of the relation of the 
Ohio Company to the genesis of the territorial policy. 

— 2 H C S 



to negotiate with tlie Indians, and an army to give protection to all con- 
cerned. At the conclusion of peace it ordered the Eevolutionary army 
disbanded, except a small guard of 80 men for Fort Pitt and West 
Point. On June 3, 1784, it instructed the Secretary of War to call 700 
men from the militia of Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and 
Pennsylvania for short terms of service in the protection of the North- 
west frontier. The dismissal of the last regiment of the Eevolutionary 
army had occurred only the day before, so that the act of Congress was 
an illustration of the new republic's fear of anything approaching a 
regular trained army and its faith in the adequacy of short term bodies 
drawn from the state militia system.- Nothing is more character- 
istically American than this action. Colonel Josiah Harmar was given 
command of the western army.^ In the fall Harmars force of state 
militia, about four hundred in number, made its way across the Alle- 
ghanies into the Indian country north of the Ohio Eiver. The militia 
of Connecticut and New York had not responded to the call. Some 
efforts were being made to recruit their quotas, but the frontier had to 
wait long for their coming.* 

During the year in which a military force was taking shape for the 
Northwest, another territorial agency of the Confederation was organ- 
ized. The first step was taken three days after the United States 
acquired title to the strip along the north side of the Ohio Valley. 
Congress appointed five commissioners who were instructed to negotiate 
with the northern and western Indians for their claims on the 
western country. A resolution urged the commissioners to make haste 
with their task. They were given power to contract with merchants 
for supplies of provisions and other gifts for the Indians as well as the 
necessities of the commission.^ Three of them, were present at a con- 
ference with the New York Indians at Fort Stanwix, and on October 
22, 1784, concluded a treaty which bears the name of the place of con- 
ference.^ The Governors of New York and Pennsylvania had represent- 
atives at the conference and treated separately with the Indians. Such 
conflicts of jurisdiction were not the least of the embarassing prol)lems 
before the national commissioners.'^ In the end the commissioners 
secured from the Six Nations the abandonment of their pretentions 
to the region south and southwest of Lake Erie. The commission then 
ordered goods "delivered to the Six Nations for their use and comfort."* 



2. Journals of Congress, IV, 433, 438. 

'Josiah Harmar, born in Philadelphia. 1753, educated at a Quaker School, 
entered Pennsylvania militia as a captain in 1777, colonel in 1777. commandant of 
■western army of Ignited States In 1784. brevet Brigradier-General in 1787. commander- 
in-chief of United States Army in 1789, retired from army in 1792, died in Phila- 
delphia. 1813. 

^ Harmar to Thomas Mifflin, President of Congress, Dec. 5, 1784, Transcripts 
obtained from the State Department by A. T. Goodman in 1871 and deposited with 
the Western Reserve Historical Society. Cited hereafter as Goodman Transcripts. 
See also Journals of Congress, IV, 874-5 ; Major Ebenezer Denny, Military Journal, 
p. 257). 

5 Journals of Congrress, IV, 345, 352, 446. 484. 

"Journals of Congress, IV, 363; 378, 382, 531; American State Papers, Indian 
Affairs, Vol. I, p. 10. 

•The Olden Times, II, 412-430; J. A. James. Some Phases of the History of 
the Northwest, Reports of the Mississippi Valley Historical Society. 171. 

« Journals of Congress, IV. 531-2. 



Oliver Wolcott,° Eiclianl Butler/" and Arthur Lee^^ served as 
€ommissioners at the Fort Stanwix conference. Wolcott was replaced 
by George Rogers Clark^- on the Commission which met the western 
Indians. Butler kept a journal of the conference which it held with 
the Wyandot. Delaware, Chippewa and Ottawa Indians at Fort Mcin- 
tosh during December and January in 178-L and 1785.^^ He describes 
a motley throng of Indians, men, women, and children, that assembled 
during the last days of November. The Commissioners doled out from 
their stores food, kettles, blankets, rum, and powder, and then struggled 
to keep m control the olDstreperous element set off by firewater and em- 
boldened by new supplies for their firearms." By a combination of 
bribery, threats, and coaxing the Indians were brought to sign the so- 
called treaty of Fort Mcintosh. A line was drawn through the central 
part of Ohio, east of which the Indians ceded their claims.^^ The treaty 
of Fort Mcintosh followed the well worn colonial policy of inducing the 
Indians to move farther westward. It seemed a great achievement. 
The Indians had in effect ceded some 30,000,000 acres to the United 
States.^^ One or two facts lessened its importance. Various influences 
caused the Indians to make scraps of paper of their pledges. 
To begin with, the Shawnee, the most powerful of the western Indians, 
were not parties to the treaty of Fort Mcintosh. But more serious 
was the fact that the treaties were concluded with only one element of 
the Indian tribes. At the very time the pacific element was coming to 
terms with the Commissioners of the United States, warrior bands were 
raiding white settlements. The political organization of the western 
Indians was extremely chaotic. No authority among the Indians could 
control the situation. And even the peace element which assented to the 
treaties had little interest in peace with the United States for its own 
sake, and an absorbing hunger for the goods which the commissioners 
were doling out. Such treaties backed by ineffective military forces 
were little less than futile absurdities, although the motives behind 
them were of the highest. 



* Oliver VVolcott. boi-n in Connecticut, 1726, graduated from Yale CoHege, 1747, 
became colonel of Connecticut Militia, 1775, brigadier-general 1776, member Con- 
tinental Congress 1776-8 and 1780-84, signer of the Declaration of Independence, 
major-general, 1779, lieutenant-governor of Connecticut, 1786-96, governor 1796, 
died while governor 1797. 

1" Richard Butler, born in Ireland 1743, brought to America by parents when 
five years old, settled in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, appointed major of Pennsylvania 
militia in 1776, lieutenant colonel 1777, and colonel of a Pennsylvania regiment; ap- 
pointed major general in St. Clair's army, 1791. killed in battle, 1791. 

^^ Arthur Lee. born in "Virginia in 174 0, educated at Eton College and University 
■of Edinburgh, studied law at the Temple in London, and practiced law in London, 
1770-6, sent by Congress on several diplomatic missions in Europe during the Revo- 
lution, member of Congress, 1782-4, member of the Board of the Treasury, 1784-9, 
died in Virginia, 1792. 

•-George Rogers Clark, born in Virginia, 1752, land surveyor by profession, 
became major in Virginia militia 1776, lieutenant colonel, 1777-79, commanding 
Virginia forces operating against the British in the Northwest, brigadier general 
in Continental Army, 1781, died in 1818. 

" Fort Mcintosh was a crude wooden fort near the mouth of the Big Beaver. 

"The Olden Time, II, 433. 

"Journals of Congress, IV, 532; American State Papers, Indian Affairs, I, 
p. 11. 

"Washington Writings, Ford edition, Vol. X, 447. 



1^0 one recognized the incompleteness of the work more clearly than 
the commissioners.^' Early in 1785 they summoned the Shawnee to 
a conference. Clark and Butler were still on the commission, but the 
third commissioner was Samuel H. Parsons/^ who was to take a place 
among the makers of the Northwest." The conference occured at the 
mouth of the Great Miami River during Januar}^, 1786. A treaty was 
concluded January 31, 1786. The Shawnee were left in possession of 
a vast sweep of territory north of the Ohio Elver, comprehending in 
general that between the Great Miami Eiver and the Wabash. The 
territory to the eastward of this tract was ceded by the Indians to the 
United "states. The title of the National Government to a great area 
of the Northwest seemed complete, and the procedure for further 
acquisitions outlined. ^^ Yet there were other forces which defeated 
these paper agreements. The British garrisons continued to occupy the 
frontier posts on American soil ; foreign fur-traders vied with American 
traders for the favor of the Indian; and squatters of American birth 
equally with uncontrollable Indian bands disregarded the treaty obli- 
gations.^^ 

Congress left the meager frontier army to struggle on with the 
forces which w^ere nullifying the treaties, and went ahead with its legis- 
lative, program. And a remarkable one this Avas. Important ordi- 
nances followed one another in annual sequence. One in 1784 outlined 
a plan under which the settlers were to institute government and take 
a place in the political union. One of 1785 adopted a plan of land 
survey, land endowments for education, and a policy of land disposal 
as a national asset. An ordinance of 1786, introducing a new mode of 
handling the relations with the Indians, completed the series.^^ A few 
weeks earlier the northern and southern Indian Commissions had been 
discontinued in order to prepare the way for reorganization.^^ 

The Ordinance of 1786 for the Eegulation of Indian Affairs created 
a national Indian department of two districts. The Ohio Eiver became 
the general line of division. A superintendent in each district was in 
charge of Indian Affairs, and required to report to Congress through 
the Secretary of AVar. Other clauses forbade foreigners residing among 
the Indians or trading with them, and established the license system for 
Americans who resided among them or traded with them. The act 
intended to provide a mode by which the National Government could 
take an effective hold of Indian trade, make it an American monopoly, 

1' Journals of Congress, IV, 486-7. 

"Samuel H. Parsons, born in Connecticut, 1737, graduate Harvard College, 
1756, beg-an practice of law, 1759, member of Connecticut Legislature, 1762-1774, 
major in Connecticut IMilitia, colonel, 1775, major general, 1780, commanding Con- 
necticut line of Continental Army, member and President of Society of Cincinnati in 
Connecticut, stockholder and director of tlie Ohio Company. 

"Journals of Congress, IV, 574. 

■" Journals of Congress, IV, 627 ; American State Papers, Indian Affairs, I, 11 ; 
Butler's Journal in Olden Time, II, 521, Another Commission had carried to a 
similar point of success the negotiations with the southern Indians. Journals of 
Congress, IV, 627. 

-iHarmar's Letters, June 1, 1785, June 21, 1785, May 7, 1786, Goodman Trans- 
cripts ; Butler's Journal, Olden Time, H, 433 ; A. C. McLaughlin, "Western Posts and 
British Debts, American Historical Association Report, 1894, 413 ; J. A. James, 
Some Phases of the History of the Northwest, Mississippi Valley Historical Asso- 
ciation, 1914-15, p. 168. 

-2 Journals of Congress, IV 677. 

2»Ibid, IV. 664. 



and meet and checkmate the British economic interests in the North- 
west. A week later Congress chose Richard Butler Superintendent of 
Indian Affairs for the northern district.^* 

The Land Ordinance of 1785 had continued the office of Geographer 
of the United States, who was virtually Surveyor General, and who with, 
the surveyors appointed by the several states was laying out the land 
according to the national system of surveys.-^ The significant thing is 
that a service previously local was nationalized. Thomas Hutchins^'* 
who had served as a national geographer since 1781 was now reappointed 
for a term of three years. In September, 1785, Hutchins took up his 
work in the JSTorthwest. The election of Butler as Indian Superin- 
tendent brought two national agencies of administration into the de- 
veloping institutions of the new national territorial system. 

In the mean time Harmars western army remained a comparatively 
feeble force. In 1785 Congress called upon Connecticut, New York, 
New Jersey, and Pennsylvania to supply eight companies of infantry 
and two of artillery. In reality the infantry seldom exceeded 500. 
Three years later, 1788, the two companies of artillery were not yet in 
western service. New York had not made any provision for recruiting 
its quota. The backwardness of the states in fulfilling their national 
duties which was paralyzing the Confederation in the East was also ham- 
pering the establishment of order and government in the Northwest. ^^ 
The losses of the army in numbers through those whose terms expired 
and through desertion from dissatification with the service nearly offset 
the gains from recruiting. Harmar complained that he had constantly 
to weaken his force by sending officers on recruiting missions into the 
states, and to maneuvre with the old soldiers in order to reenlist them. 
The necessity of securing the approval of state executives to all changes 
in officers in each state's quota undermined discipline.-^ The Journal 
of Joseph Buell, a sergeant in Harmar's regiment, gives a glimpse of the 
kind of maneuvring which won re-enlistments. The entry is for July 
4, 1786, It reads as follows; "The great day of American independence 
was commemorated by the discharge of thirteen guns; after which the 
troops were served with extra rations of liquor, and allowed to get drunk 
as much as they pleased."-'' 

There is no evidence that time was creating a well equipped, well 
disciplined national force capable of coping with frontier conditions. 
The testimony of the witnesses records a constant struggle of the 
officers with the soldiers for the maintenance of discipline. In 1786 
after a long debate Congress yielded to the urgent representations of the 
commander of the western army, the Secretary of War, the Governor 

=^ Journals of Congress, IV, 683 ; Butler's jurisdiction extended from the Hudson 
to the Mississippi, and from the Ohio to the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes. 

"'. Journals of Congress, IV, 520. 

=<" Thomas Hutchins, born in New Jersey, 1730, entered British army, joined 
American Continental army in 1779, appointed geographer for the southern army 
by General Greene in 1781, appointed sole geographer of the United States in 1784, 
continued in office until death in 1789. A Surveyor General was finally created by 
the act of 1796. Rufus Putnam became first Surveyor General. Journals of Con- 
gress, III, 617, 644; IV, 627, 636, 818. 

"Report of a Committee of Congress, October 2, 1788, Journals of Congress, 
IV, 874 ; Harmar, Letter of June 15, 1788, in Goodman Transcripts. 

-''Ha7-mar's Letter, .January 10, 1788, Goodman Transcripts. 

-'Hildreth, Pioneer History, 144. 



of Virginia, and the frontier settlements. The size of the western army 
Avas set at 2,000 men. And yet Harmar reported in 1788 that the 
limit of his expectations for the year was for 595 men. Such troops 
as Harmar had were of necessity kept scattered in small garrisons along 
the Ohio Valley.^° 

When Colonel Harmar arrived in the Ohio country he found 
squatters rapidly taking possession. Some had settled there during the 
Eevolution.^^^ After the Eevolution it seemed "as if the old states 
would depopulate and the inhabitants would be transplanted to the 
new."^2 In the valley of nearly every tributary of the Ohio from the 
north was one or more pioneer shacks and tiny clearings. In the 
larger valleys considerable settlements existed. One of Harmar's officers 
reported a settlement of 300 families on the Hockhockiug Eiver and an 
equal number on the Muskingum. It is probable that the estimate was 
an exaggeration. There is not evidence enough to determine the exact 
extent of settlement. It is certain the number impressed those who 
witnessed the migration. The pipneers were chiefly the Scotch-Irish 
backwoodsmen from Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina who 
were venturing farther afield. Their civilization was the prototype of that 
which spreads over parts of the great Appalachian Highland still. ^^ 
They were then the vanguard of the American people advancing in steady 
strides through the forest wilderness of North America. They were 
not waiting for the formalities of survey and title to the lands which 
they claimed. Tomahawk rights had been good enough for their ances- 
tors ; such rights were good enough for them. 

Some of them were beginning the rudiments of state building as 
their kind had been doing for many years on the borders of Virginia 
and North Carolina.^* At Mercer's Town the people had chosen justices 
of the peace and begun to carry on town government.^^ At another 
place Harmar's men found a call for an election to choose members of 
a constitutional convention. From the fact that voters were to cast their 
ballots at the mouth of the Miami Eiver, the Scioto Eiver, and the 
Muskingum the area covered by the embryonic state can be fairly well 
defined. The promoters set forth in the call the frontier interpretation 
of democracy. Their political creed was congressional non-interfer- 
ference and squatter rights in frontier settlement.^*' Similar move- 

30 The principal posts were Fort Franklin, near the mouth of French Creek ; 
Fort Mcintosh, near the mouth of the Big Beaver ; Fort Harmar. at the mouth 
of the Muskingum ; Fort Steuben, at the rapids of the Ohio ; and Post Vincennes 
on the Wabash River ; Fort Harmar was the usual headquarters of the command- 
ant until Fort Washington was established opposite the mouth of the Licking River 
in 1789. Harmar to Knox, September 12, 1789, Goodman Transcripts; Journals of 
Congress, IV. 874. 

"Ohio Archeological and Historical Society Publications, VI, 13 5; Hulbert, 
Records of the Ohio Company, I, xxi-xxiii. 

3= Olden Times. II, 499; Wm. H. Smith, St. Clair Papers, II, 3-5 (Cited hereafter 
as St. Clair Papers). 

''Ohio Archeological and Historical Society Publications, VI, 135; Olden Time, 
II, 442-6 ; The Journal of John Mathews, a nephew of Rufus Putnam, in Hildredth, 
Pioneer History of Ohio, 177-8. The latter describes a corn husking among this 
class, and frontier social inanners. 

^* F. J. Turner, Western State Making, American Historical Review, I, 70. 

'" Mercer's Town was in Belmont County nearly opposite Wheeling. See Arm- 
strong to Harmar, April 12, 1785, and Harmar to R. H. Lee, May 1, 1785, Goodman 
Transcripts; Butler's Journal in Olden Time, II, 443; St. Clair Papers, II. 3. 

" St. Clair Papers, II, 5. 



ments south of the Ohio linally matured in statehood without Congress- 
ional interference. For example, the settlements of Kentucky became 
a state without a period of national control. This squatter migration 
into the Ohio country ran counter to a new national mode of state 
building, and was forced to give way. 

Congress began its territoi'ial policy by closing the western lands to 
occupation until they were surveyed and formally placed on sale. In- 
truders were to be driven off. A proclamation to this effect was pub- 
lished by the commissioners while they were negotiating with the 
Indians at Fort Mcintosh, January 24, 1785. Colonel Harmar waa 
instructed to enforce the proclamation.^^ The impelling motives of 
Congress in this first step are plain : the promises of bounty lands to 
the soldiers of the Eevolution, the needs of a national treasury bank- 
rupt from the burden of interest on the war debt, and the treaty obliga- 
tions to the Indians were an effective combination of reasons for a new 
start in the settlement of the national domain. Harmar proceeded 
during 1T85 to expel the squatters who had settled along the north 
shore of the Ohio and along the courses of its tributaries. In a few 
places the inhabitants threatened organized resistance; in all cases they 
gave way in the end before superior forces, sometimes sullenly, but 
always without bloodshed. Their cabins, such bark or log structures 
as there were, were destroyed. The. bolder squatters were later found 
to have returned, and the process was repeated until the country was 
apparently cleared of this type of settlers. The records of the Ohio 
Company show no evidence of the survival of these squatters, who if 
they had been present would have plagued it not a little.^* 

Harmar extended his activities against the squatters to the western 
French villages in 1787. At Vincennes he found that 400 squatters 
had taken refuge in the village among the French. The Americans were 
cultivating their fields in the neighborhood in armed bands in a state of 
perpetual warfare with roving hostile Indians. He warned them of the 
worthlessness of their land titles, but later events showed that he failed 
to terminate these particular lawless encroachments on Indian lands. ^'^ 
While Harmar was on the Wabash he heard that the Iventuckians were 
pushing onto tlie public lands about Iva?kaskia as through on open door. 
From Vincennes Harmar extended his western journe}^ to the "great 
American Bottom." He found that many of George Eogers Clark's 
followers had made "tomahawk claims" in the region. At Bellefontaine, 
a small village near Kaskaskia, there was a stockaded American settle- 
ment. A little farther on was another village called Grand Eaisseau 

" St. Clair Papers, II, 3 ; The Olden Time, II, 340 ; J. A. James, Some Phases 
of the History of the Northwest, Mississippi Valley Historical Association, Proceed- 
ings, 1913-14, 187. 

'* Harmar. December 5. 1784, April 25. 1785, May 1. 1785. .Tune 1. 1785. and 
Armstrong to Harmar, April 12, 1785, Goodman Transcripts; St. Clair Papers, II, 
3; Butler's .Journal in Olden Time, II, 437, 438, 440; Journal of John Mathews in 
Hildreth, Pioneer HLstory of Ohio, 183. 

='' Harmar, August 7, 1787, Goodman Transcripts; St. Clair Papers, II, 24, 26; 
.Journal of Joseph Buell, Hildreth, Pioneer History, 154 ; Roosevelt, Winning of the 
West, III., 79, 235. 



10 

inhabited by the same sort of people. His descriptions of the Illinois 
villages and the conditions of living are interesting, but aside from the 
subject at this time. At Cahokia he assembled the French inhabitants 
and advised them to place their militia on a better footing, to abide by 
the decision of their courts, and restrain the disorderly element until 
Congress could provide a government for them. It shocked him to 
find that "all these people are entirely unacquainted with what Amer- 
icans call liberty. Trial by jui-y etc. they are strangers to." A con- 
siderable number of other squatters were found scattered on the rich 
bottoms at some distance from the French villages. Everywhere 
Harmar warned the Americans from the lands they were occupying. 
For reasons not clear in the correspondence he took no steps to enforce 
the order. The Indians in . these parts, he says, were not numerous, 
but ''amazing fond of whiskey" and "ready to destroy a considerable 
quantity." Before returning to the posts on the Ohio he visited the 
Spanish settlements on the west bank of the Mississippi and described 
at some length his experience in the foreign land.*" 

Harmar's well written, informing letters to the Secretary of War 
give the impression of a faithful, wide awake public servant. They 
present a continuous account of the struggle of the western army against 
disorder and lawless colonization. It would seem that Harmar 
succeeded in checking the squatter movement which had set into the 
Ohio country, that he drove out the adventurers along the upper Ohio 
Eiver, that he only partially stopped the same movement across the lower 
Ohio, adventuring from the Kentucky side below the Falls, and finally 
failed utterly to master the divers elements in the French villages. The 
latter passed through eight years of near anarchy.*^ The American 
frontiersmen in their midst made conditions worse than they would 
have otherwise been. Eemnants of the Virginia county government 
survived, but with such the French had little sympathy or understand- 
ing.*^ The French villages formed in reality city-states as independent 
as their classic predecessors in the Mediterranean basin had been. 

Though Harmar's forces brought the squatter movement under a 
fair degree of control, the relations of the government with the Indians 
were constantly embarrassed by the borderers who broke through the 
line of forts along the Ohio Eiver either for the game or the plunder to 
be found on the Indian lands. The struggle between the roving bands 
of Indians and the equally lawless whites was a ceaseless one. It would 
have required a vastly larger army than Harmar possessed to "have 
effectually curbed these elements.*^ Moreover his efforts were nullified 
by the influence of British interests on the northern frontier. He con- 
stantly pressed on the War Department the view that the United States 
could never have the respect of the Indians as long as the British garri- 

■"' Harmar to Knox, Dec. 9, 1787, Goodman Transcripts; Journal of Joseph Buell, 
Hildreth, Pioneer History, 156; St. Clair Papers, II, 18, 30. 

"1782-1790. 

*' C. W. Alvord, Cahokia Records, Illinois Historical Collection, II, cxl, cxviii. 

"Harmar to Knox, August 10, 1788, August 9, 1787, and December 9, 1787, in 
Goodman Transcripts; Saint Clair Papers, II, 18; Journal of John Mathews, in 
Hildreth's Pioneer History of Ohio, 177-183 ; Roosevelt, Winning of the West, III, 88. 



]1 

sons held American posts on the Great Lake frontier.*^ Such was the 
situation in 1787. Harmar was trying to guard a frontier of more than 
twelve hundred miles which separated the white outposts of civilization 
from the Indian regions. Eichard Butler as Superintendent of Indian 
Affairs with his deputies was engaged in bribing the Indians with pres- 
ents into keeping their promises, while equally generous British agents 
at the Lake posts were annuling the effect of Butler's work. Geographer 
Hutchins with his small bands of surveyors was laying out the seven 
ranges of townships on the upper Ohio River. Of regular civil govern- 
ment there was none, except the rudiments in the French city-states of 
the far west; of American population there was no longer any, except 
that which clung to the neighborhood of the French villages for pro- 
tection. 

On July 13, 1787, Congress passed an ordinance to give the Terri- 
tory of the Northwest the needed local government. The matter had 
been under consideration for nearly a year.*^ The plan of government 
which had been adopted in 1784 needed a provision for the period in 
which there were not enough inhabitants to constitute a republican 
government. Congress was in a frame of mind in 1787 to consider a 
substitute for its earlier measure. Eecent researches show beyond doubt 
that there was an organized drive of investors, holders of revolutionary 
bounty rights, and of state and national securities of indebtedness to 
force Congress to sell the western land in large lots and to accept 
securities of indebtedness in payment at their face value; they show 
further that these elements were cemented together by the fraternal 
bonds of a common membership in the Society of the Cincinnati and in 
the Union Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons ;*** and that they hastened 
the action of Congress in providing a government for the territory. 
However the Ordinance of 1787 in its final form was the result of several 
years deliberation. The usual emphasis in the consideration of the 
act is on the rudiments of a Bill of Rights and the anti-slavery clause 
which it contained. Yet neither of those clauses much affected the 
history of the ISTorthwest. The population of the Northwest would 
hardly have acted differently if the restraints of the Ordinance had not 
existed. It is probably true that the oratory which has been expended 
upon them has consideral^ly stimulated American ' ideals. But the 
clauses of the Ordinance which provided for immediate civil government, 
and finally for the admission of the several portions of the territory into 
the national union of states on equal terms with the original states 
were rules which determined the course of American history. They 
were the fulfilment of Congressional pledges.*^ In them statesman- 
ship of the highest order found expression. 

^* Harmar to Knox, June 1, 1785; to Francis Johnson. June 21, 1785 ; to Thomas 
Mifflin, June 25, 1785 ; to Knox. July 16, 1785, and May 7, 1786, in Goodman Trans- 
scripts ; Butler's Journal in Olden Time, II, 502. 

*■' Journals of Congress, IV, 701, 702, 703, 746, 747, 751. 

■*" Records of the Ohio Company, Marietta College Historical Collection, I. 

■"Journals of Congress, III, October 10, 1780. 



12 

How timely the passage of the act was is shown by the events of 
the succeeding months. Manasseh Cutler*^ and Winthrop Sargent*® 
carried through the dual contract of the Ohio Company of Associates 
and the Scioto group of speculators. And before a year had elapsed 
Eufus Putman^" as superintendent of the company led the advance 
party which began a colonizing movement as momentous as any in 
American history."^ Close on these events John C. Symmes^^ concluded 
a similar contract with the Treasury Board on behalf of the Miami 
Company, and led in person another body of home builders into the 
Northwest. ^^ The leaders and large part of the colonists were Eevo- 
lutionary soldiers and officers from the far east. Harmar observed that 
they were a very different class from the squatters whom he had been 
expelling.^* 

The work of establishing civil government began with the passage of 
the Ordinance. One section of the Ordinance provided for the appoint- 
ment by Congi'ess of a Governor, a Secretary, and three judges for the 
temporary government of the entire ISTorthwest. The terms and func- 
tion of the officers were prescribed. The Governor was assigned the 
executive functions, the judges those of a judiciary. The Governor and 
the judges together were to form a territorial Legislative Council. This 
was the bridge by which the government of the territory was to pass from 
the rule of the Superintendent of Indian Affairs and military command- 
ant to the first stage of republican government when there should be a 
population of .5,000 free males. On October 5, 1787, Congress chose 
its President, Arthur St. Clair.^^ Governor of the Northwest Territory, 
and Winthrop Sargent, Secretary.^" Manasseh Cutler's very humaii 
and Franklin like diary bears witness to the view that St. Clair's appoint- 

■•' Manasseh Cutler, born in Connecticut in 1742, graduated at Yale College in 
1765, entered the ministry in 1770, pastor in Ipswich, Massachusetts 1771-1823, 
chaplain in a Massachusetts regiment during the Revolution, leading stockholder 
in the Ohio Company, member of Congress, 1801-05. died in 1823. 

^'Winthrop Sargent, born in Massachusetts, 1753, graduated at Harvard Col- 
lege, 1771, became major in artillery during the Revolution, a surveyor in the North- 
west after the Revolution, stockholder and secretary of the Ohio Company, became 
Secretary of Northwest Territory in 1788, Governor of Mississippi Territory in 
1798, died in 1820. 

^o Rufus Putnam, born in Massachusetts in 1738, cousin of Israel Putnam, 
apprenticed to a millwright in 1754, enlisted as a private in the French and Indian 
War, 1757, a practical surveyor from 1760, entered the Revolutionary army in 1775 
as lieutenant colonel, became Colonel and chief engineer in the army in 1776, 
Brigadier General in 1783, member of the Massachusetts Legislature, leading stock- 
holder and Director of the Ohio Company. Superintendent of the Ohio Company 
from 1788, judge of the Supreme Court of the Northwest Territory, 1790-1796, 
Surveyor General of the United States, 1796-1803. 

^^ Cutler, Life, .Tournals and Correspondence of Manasseh Cutler, I, ch. 9 ; The 
.John May Papers, Western Reserve Historical Society Reports, "Vol. 97 ; Records of 
the Ohio Company, Marietta College Historical Collections, Vol. I, 13, 26. 

'-John C. Symmes, born in New York, 1742, teacher and land surveyor, soldier 
in army of Revolution, member of Congress from New .Jersey, 1785, 1786, leading' 
promotor of Miami Company from 1787, judge of Supreme Court of the Northwest 
Territory 1788-1803, died in 1818. 

'■^ Symmes, Circular to the Public, Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, 
Quarterly, V, 82 ff. 

•■^^ Harmar to Knox, April 26, 1788; to Johnston, April 28, 1789, in Goodman 
Transcripts; Harmar, March 22, 1789, and November 9, 1789, in Journal of Eben- 
ezer Denny, Appendix, pp. 440, 445. 

^^ Arthur St. Clair, born in Scotland, 1734, educated at University of Edinburgh, 
entered British army and served in America in French and Indian War, settled in 
western Pennsylvania in 1764, became Colonel in Revolutionary army, 1776, Major 
General, 1777, member of Congress, 1785-7, President of Congress, 1787, President 
of Pennsylvania Society of the Cincinnati, 1783-9, Governor of Northwest Territory, 
1788-1802. 

=■' Journals of Congress, IV, 786. 



13 

meiit was a part of the political jobbery by which the dual purchase of 
the Ohio Company and the Scioto group had been put through Con- 
gress.^' St. Clair was a large land owner in the Ligonier Valley in 
western Pennsylvania, and a stockholder of the Ohio Company.^^ The 
office of northern Superintendent of Indian Affairs, which General 
Richard Butler had held, was at the same time merged with that of 
Governor.^'' That Sargent and Parsons should be Secretary and one of 
the three judges, respectively, was a part of the bargain Cutler, on behalf 
of the Ohio Company, carried through Congress. Both were Directors 
of the Ohio Company. James M. Varnum,*''* another Director of the 
Ohio Company, and John C. Symmes, the leading stockholder in the 
Miami Company, were the other judges chosen by Congress."^ It was 
a government in its personnel of great landlords, as colonizing enter- 
prises in American History had generally been. 

The first immigrants of the Ohio Company who arrived in the 
Spring of IT 88 were in advance of the arrival of St. Clair, and had to 
provide in a measure for their own civil affairs. The Board of Directors 
of the Ohio Company set np a temporary local village organization in 
June, 1788, for the interim until the regularly constituted authorities 
should arrive. The Board itself acted as a local Board of Police in 
Marietta. It organized the inhabitants into local militia, and minutely 
regulated the local affairs of the busy community. A minister and a 
teacher were engaged, and the expenses borne by the company's revennes."- 
But the period of extra-legal proprietary government soon passed. 

Early in July one of Harmar's military barges, driven by twelve 
oarsmen, met Governor St. Clair at Pittsburgh and bore him to the 
headquarters of the western armv, located at Fort Harmar, across the 
^luskingum from Marietta. Soldiers and civilians were duly impressed 
by the solemnity of the first act in the drama of actually establishing 
Civil Government in the Northwest. The fifteenth day of July, 1788,. 
was set -for the formal opening. What seemed appropriate ceremonies 
took place at the bower erected for the occasion in the clearing which 
was becoming the site of Marietta. After the formalities of the occasion 
St. Clair described the temporary government which he was to establish 
for the infancy of the territory.''^ 

The Ordinance of 1787 entrusted the Governor with the duty of 
laying out the territory into counties and townships, and appointing 
the necessary officials for local administration. The execution of this 
duty together with the exigencies of Indian Affairs made his office to a 
considerable extent an itinerant one. A proclamation of July 27, 1788, 

=' Cutler, Life, Journals, and Correspondence of, July 23, 26. 1787. 

=>• Cutler, Life, Journals, and Correspondence of, July 23, 26. 1787. 

°* St. Clair Papers, I, 7; Records of the Ohio Company, I, 49n. 

^'Journals of Congress, IV, 784-5. 

""James M. Varnum, born in Massachusetts, 1749, graduated from Rhode Island 
College (Brown University), in 1769, began the practice of law. 1771, became 
colonel in Rhode Island regiment. 1775, brigadier general in Continental army, 1777, 
member of Congress, 1780-82, 1786-7, a stockholder and director of the Ohio Com- 
pany, appointed a judge in the Supreme Court of Northwest Territory, 1787-9. . 

" Journals of Congress, IV, 799, 809. 

^- The John Mav Papers, Western Reserve Historical Society Reports, Vol. 97, 
pp. 71. 104-112; Records of the Ohio Company, I, 40; II, 6, 7, 29, 50-51. 

" St. Clair Papers, II, 53-56. 



14 

formed the region east of the line of the Cuyahoga, the Tuscarawas, 
and the Scioto Elvers into a county with the name of Washington. The 
offices well known in the Pennsylvania county system were created, and 
the appointments made.''* The progress of the Miami Company between 
the Little Miami and the Big Miami Eivers led to the organization of 
Hamilton county in January, 1790. The middle settlement of the 
company, christened Cincinnati and made the headquarters of the 
Avestern army, became the county seat.^^ St. Clair preceded from Cin- 
cinnati on a tour of organization. At Clarksville, a small settlement 
forming on George Eogers Clark's tract, St. Clair tarried to make a 
beginning of local government, appointing a justice of the peace and the 
officers of the militia.*"' The French settlers farther west had petitioned 
for relief from their political anarchy. St. Clair undertook to meet 
their Avishes. His party arrived in Kaskaskia in Februar}^, 1790. He 
found the task before him a complicated one. The settlement of land 
claims proved to be a difficult problem, and delayed him many months. 
In the end Congress gave every head of a family in the western villages, 
whether French or American, who was living in the region in 1783, 
400 acres of land. Every man enlisted in the militia in 1790 also 
received 100 acres of land.®'^ The poor, gentle folk of the French vil- 
lages were not easily converted into an American political community. 
But the usual procedure was gone through. The region from the Ohio 
Eiver northward along the Mississippi as far as the junction of the Little 
Mackinaw Creek with the Illinois Eiver was joined together into St. 
Clair County, and the usual appointments from the local population 
made.®® St. Clair had intended to return by Vincennes, and there to 
organize a fourth county, but Indian matters demanded his presence 
among the settlements on the upper Ohio. He accordingly sent Secre- 
tary Sargent to Vincennes to carry out that part of his program. The 
Wabash settlement received the county form of government, and the 
name of Knox, the Secretary of War. In the period of preliminary 
organization St. Clair used the executive proclamation freely, and 
encroached on the powers of the Legislative Council. Against this 
tendency President Washington warned him, and in characteristic stilted 
phrases advised circumspection in conduct in order to avoid a ground 
of clamor against public characters.^^ 

The three judges appointed by Congress constituted a Supreme 
Court. Judge Yarnum died in 1789, and General Parsons in 1790. 
President Washington appointed George Turner^" and Eufus Putman 
to fill the vacancies.'^^ The judges seldom sat together in a joint court. 

"St. Clair Papers, II, 78-9 

"■■'Ibid, II, 129. 

"'Ibid, II, 131n; Caleb Atwater, History of Ohio. p. 130. 

"•American State Papers, Public Lands, II, 124 ; C. W. Alvord, Cahokia Records, 
Illinois Historical Collection, II, cxl. 

•■•sst. Clair Papers, I, 168 ; II, 136. 

"3 Washington to St. Clair, January 2, 1791, St, Clair Papers, II, 198. 

'"George Turner, from Virginia was appointed in 1789. Little is known of his 
life. He removed to the Far West in 1796, and resigned from the territorial court, 
in 1797. 

"In 1789 the Congress of the United States re-enacted the Ordinance of 1787, 
modified so as to give the power to appoint officers of the territory to the President 
with the Senate as required by the Constitution. 



15 

In practice each one held court where he was residing, with an occasional 
session in an outlying settlement. Symmes and Putnian were the active 
directors of the two dominant land companies of the Northwest. Every 
land dispute that arose was connected with some act of one or the other 
of them. This meant that a judge of the Supreme Court was frequently 
sitting in Judgment over his acts. St. Clair recommended an amend- 
ment to the Ordinance to require the presence of two or more judges 
in each session of the court, and to grant the privilege of appeal to the 
Federal Courts."- The immediate result was to widen the breach 
which had already opened between the judges and the Governor in 
making laws. 

The Ordinance joined the Governor and Judges in a Legislative 
Council whose function was "to adopt and publish * * * such 
laws of the original States * * * as may be necessary * * * 
which shall be in force * * * unless disapproved by Congress." 
The process of making laws was irregular and simple in the early 
period. The Legislative Council adopted laws until 1795 by informal 
conference or correspondence. In only two cases were there more than 
two judges joined with the Governor in the passage of a law. There 
does not appear to have been any regular time or place, or indeed any 
meeting at all for the purpose of making laws. The Governor and the 
Judges acted as occasion arose. '^^ The members of this Legislative 
Council differed from the beginning over the meaning of the clause of 
the ordinance which defined the law-making power of themselves. The 
clause began with the phrase "the governor and judges, or a majority of 
them shall" etc. St. Clair contended that the clause meant that the 
governor's assent was necessaiy to all laws. The true meaning, he said, 
was that "the governor and judges, or a majority of them, provided the 
governor be one of that majority, shall" etc. The judges held to the 
equality of the four members of the Legislative Council. The Governor-'s 
view in effect gave him an absolute veto, and this at a time when the 
executive veto was relatively uncommon in the older states. This was 
only one of several controversies over the interpretation of the Ordinance 
of 1787. A clause of the Ordinance had authorized the Legislative 
Council to "adopt and publish in the district such laws of the original 
States * * * as may be necessary and best suited to the circum- 
stances * * * which laws shall be in force * * * unless dis- 
approved by Congress." The judges assumed that the clause might be 
liberally construed, and accordingly chose laws of the original States, 
modifying them to suit the circumstances of the frontier. St. Clair 
took the view that the law limited their power to the adoption without 
modification of laws of the States. 

The issue has generally been made to illustrate the jealous care of 
Bt. Clair for the powers of the executive and reflect certain of his un- 

"St. Clair Papers, II. 332-4, 339-40. 

"St. Clair Papers, II. 80nl, 167n, 275n. 311n. The Ordinances of 1788, 1790, 
and 1791, were published in Philadelphia in 1792 bv Francis Childs and John Swaine 
as "Laws passed in the Territory of the United States Northwest of the Ohio River." 
Those of 1792 were published under the same title by the same publishers in 1794. 
The acts of 1795 were published in 1796 at Cincinnati bv Wm. Maxwell, and are 
commonly known as the Maxwell code. Tho.'^e of 1798 were published at Cincinnati 
in 1798 by Edmund Freeman, and are called the Freeman code. 



16 

pleasant traits of character. As a matter of fact his case is a strong 
one. He did not accuse his opponents of any ulterior motives. He 
conceded that the judges were by legal training better qualified to make 
laws if laws were to be made by the Council than he was, but he con- 
tended that their procedure was a form of loose construction not war- 
ranted by the Ordinance, that their function was to select laws made by 
the democratic legislatures of the States, and that otherwise the liberties 
of the people of the Northwest would be endangered. On the one hand 
the judges made the law-giving body of the territory a small group of 
four men, in which group the promoters of the land companies were 
dominant; on the other the Governor made the eastern state legislatures 
the law-making bod}^, leaving the Legislative Council of the territory 
to choose from the codes of the East. On St. Clair's side was the argu- 
ment that the basis of legislation in the ultimate analysis was the 
representative assembly; on the side of the judges the defense that laws 
made for older eastern communities were seldom adapted to frontier 
conditions. Congress accepted St. Claii*'s view of the situation. It 
ruled that his assent was necessary to every law, and also withheld its 
approval from the laws Avhich had departed in phraseology from the acts 
of the original States. However as the judges decided that the mere 
withholding of approval from territorial acts did not annul them, and 
continued to be guided in their courts by the laws which Congress had 
refused to approve, and as an attempt in Congress to expressly declare 
such laws null and void failed of passage, the legal situation in the 
Northwest was for a time confusion confounded.'^* 

If St. Clair was the nominal victor in the controversy over legis- 
lative procedure, he lost in the other over judical procedure. On May 8, 
1792, Congress for a second time amended the Ordinance of 1787.'^^ 
The Judges of the Supreme Court were authorized to hold court 
separately, and the recommendation of St. Clair rejected. The amend- 
ment also empowered the Governor and Judges as the Legislative 
Council to repeal laws as well as enact them.^*^* 

The laws of the period followed the well worn paths of American 
legislation for the frontier. The first act of the law makers reflected 
the social conditions of the time and place. All men from 16 years 
to 50 years of age were to be enrolled in militia companies, furnish 
their own arms and hold a weekly muster each Sunday morning at ten 
o'clock at a place near the house of worship. St. Clair advised the 
enrollment of all new-comers as they arrived." He had undoubtedly 
gotten the idea of continuous enrollment from the measures which the 
Directors of the Ohio Company took in the brief interim in 1788 before 
his arrival in the Northwest. They had appointed an officer whose 
duty it was to keep a census of the settlers. Travellers or immigrants 
were put under obligation to report to this officer within 24 hours after 
arrival. ^^ Nothing so simple and sensible and yet so likely to be irksome 

"From 1792 to 1795. St. Clair Papers, II, 64, 67, 78nl, 333, 363-4; Burnet, 
Notes of the Northwest, p. 417. 

" See note 71. 

"Annals of Congress, III, 1395; Laws of the United States, 1796, II, 126. 

■' St. Clair Papers, II. 61. 

''The John May Papers, Western Reserve Historical 'Society, Reports, Vol. 97, 
p. 107. 



17 

to the individualists could survive the air of license of the frontier. Few 
of the territorial laws have any special historical interest today. The 
creation of courts of justice, the definition of crime, the authorization 
of court houses, jails, pillories, whipping posts and stocks for the several 
communities were signs of the westward march of the old civilization. 
The development of Civil Government in the Northwest Territory 
-was impeded by the Indian wars. During the closing scenes of the 
Confederation the Indian conflict was put otf by more and more lavish 
gifts.'^® The territorial authorities awaited anxiously the inauguration 
of the stronger National Government in 1789. The problem of the 
Indian of the Northwest was bequeathed to the administration of Presi- 
dent Wasliington.^° But the vigorous, compact settlements of the 
Ohio Company and the Miami Company in the Ohio Valley in 1788 
and 1789 alarmed the more Avarlike tribes and consolidated the bolder 
warriors into a party of action before the new Federal Government was 
ready to meet the situation.**^ St. Clair and Harmar battled with the 
hopeless task with the small and badly organized forces given them. St 
Clair outlined a plan of campaign w^hich called for a force nearly twice the 
number Harmar had, to be officered by regular army officers, instead of 
State militia officers, and which should advance in three or four divisions 
from the Ohio River posts.*- The Secretary of War thought a plan of 
such magnitude "would not be compatible with the public view or the 
public finance,"®^ and advised a small punitive expedition. It is appar- 
ent that the western leaders had one problem in mind, the Secretary of 
War another. There were two real problems. The historical question 
is how much by way of sacrifice the citizens of the new republic would 
have made for the western territory. The Secretary of War doubted 
the wisdom of making the call which the western authorities deemed 
needful. Harmar's expedition in October, 1790, was the attempt of 
the territorial authorities to carry out the wishes of the Department of 
War. Harmar led the western army, re-enforced by a small body of 
short term militia, from Cincinnati through the almost pathless forests 
to the headwaters of the Wabash and the Maumee Eivers. He burned 
the Indian villages and destroyed their standing crops. The immediate 
object of the expedition was accomplished, but at such a cost in the loss 
of life from counter Indian attacks that it was a moral defeat.** The 
risk of a punitive campaign 150 miles into the Indian country was 
repeated in 1791. The better military opinion in the Northwest had 
advised against such an expedition.*^ The conditions were altogether 
against success. St. Clair had been given the chief command. It is 

'"St. Clair Papers, II. 40, 47, 50. 90, 101. 

'"Harmar to Knox, June 14, 1788, October 13, 1788. in Goodman Transcripts. 

" Cutler, Life. .Journal, and Correspondence of Manasseh Cutler, I, 389 ; Harmar 
to Knox, .Tune 9, 1789, in Goodman Transcripts. 

«=St. Clair Papers, II, 90, 91. 

"St. Clair Papers, II, 183. 

"Harmar, October 21, 1790, November 4, 1790, in Goodman Transcripts; Ameri- 
can State Papers, Indian Affairs, I, 104-5, 121-2 ; Burnet, Notes on the Nortiiwest, 
pp. 127-S. 

^^ The opinions of Harmar and St. Clair already cited ; that of General Rufus 
Putnam, St. Clair Papers, II, 305 ; of .ludge John C. Svmmes, Historical and 
Philosophical Society of Ohio, Quarterly, V, 93. 



lb 

doubtful whether St. Clair showed the proper aggressive leadership. Cer- 
tain it is that factors bej^ond his control made defeat inevitable. The 
militia arrived too late for effective cooperation. A large part of them 
were entirely without military experience, and therefore, worse than 
useless. The commisariat grossly mismanaged its affairs. The only 
conclusion of interest to historical students is that the responsibility for 
the disastrous campaign should properly be distributed among the 
authorities concerned. 

Such expeditions as Hai'mar's in 1790 and St. Clair's in 1791 only 
emboldened and enfuriated the Indians. For the three years which 
followed^ the frontier settlements were thrown into a state of siege. 
Settlements receded, and Civil Government was almost paralyzed. This 
condition endured until General Wayne had taken over the military 
command, and slowly and painstakingly conquered the obstacles his 
predecessors had not been given either the time or the resources to over- 
come. The Battle of Fallen Timber ended an era in Northwestern 
History. But Jay's treaty, which withdrew the British from Detroit 
and placed an American garrison there, was an equally vital factor. 
The Indians doubly discouraged by defeat and by the apparent desertion 
of the British entered into the Treaty of Greenville in 1795. By that 
a great section of the JSTorthwest Territory — ^more than half of what 
was to be Ohio — was finally freed from the Indian barrier to settlement 
and Civil Government. 

The crisis in the history of the Northwest territory passed in 1795. 
The last of the several barriers to the development of an orderly 
colonial or territorial system had been overcome. The original back- 
woodsmen were from this time returning as settlers, either on the lands 
of Congress or of one of the land companies, in competition with ad- 
venturers from the seaboard. The Ordinance of 1786 by which the 
Indian trade was limited to licensed American traders was superseded 
in 1796 by the statute which took over the Indian trade as a government 
monopoly. The Federal Government for a time maintained trading 
posts in the Northwest, employed managers and clerks at the stores, and 
purchased goods for the trade. The adventure of the Government in a 
field ordinarily reserved for private enterprise was devised for the pro- 
tection of the Indians. It was never very popular in Congress or out 
of Congress, and soon ran its course.^^ 

The informal processes of government which had marked the 
history of the Northwest through nearly seven years gave way to more 
formal ones. Emergency law-making by executive proclamation ceased. 
Law-making by Judges of the Supreme Court who were at the same 
time landlords of the territory likewise ceased. The Legislative Council 
foraially organized as a legislative body at Cincinnnati, May 29, 1795, 
and remained in continuous session until August 25. A general code of 
laws, selected as the Ordinance prescribed from the statutes of the orig- 
inal States, was adopted and published. A period of government by bor- 
rowed legislation succeeded. The theory was as follows: if the peopla 

8" Annals of Congress, V, 152, 170, 230, 241, 904, 939. 



10 

of the territories were not yet al)le to make their own Uiws, the next best 
thing would be to employ the laws of communities which were demo- 
cratically organized. The laws of 1795 were almost all borrowed from 
Pennsylvania. A second session of the Legislative Council sat in 1798, 
and a second code was drafted.^' The laws of 1798 were drawn rather 
evenly from the codes of the States. The larger number was adopted 
from Kentucky, rather naturally for its frontier conditions were more 
closely akin to those of the Northwest territory. The opportunity to 
adopt laws from Kentucky after its admission into the Union made it 
easier to reconcile the rule of the Ordinance with the practical con- 
ditions of a frontier, the judgement of the judges as to practical legis- 
lation with the political instinct of the Governor.^^ 

The further progress in the organization of Civil C4overnment in the 
Xorthwest was along the paths prescribed by the Ordinance of 1787. 
The critical period of the first phase of organization had passed. The 
records of the Xorthwest Territory showed in 1798 a population of 
5.000 males. St. Clair made the fact known as was his duty under the 
Ordinance. A representative assembly was duly chosen and assembled 
at Cincinnati in September, 1799. Delegates from the nine counties 
which by this time formed the Territory of the Xorthwest constituted 
the popular element in the Legislature, and five Councillors the second 
branch.®^ The event inaugurated the second step toward the creation 
of full republican government. The final step came as a matter of 
course as portions of the territory reached the mark in population set 
for statehood. The overcoming of one barrier after another to Civil 
Government in the Xorthwest, and the progress from one stage to an- 
other as outlined in the Ordinance of 1787 were events which put into 
operation the American Colonial or Territorial System. In them the 
United States finally mastered the problem with which the British 
Government began to grapple in its Proclamation of 1763.^° But the 
British Proclamation, because it said in effect "thus far shalt thou go," 
and because its authors accompanied it by a scheme of imperial taxation, 
and failed to relieve the situation by compensating constructive measures 
t3f imperial organization, led straight to the Eevolution. The American 
colonial policy after a short period of restraint opened the national 
domain to occupation, assured the colonizers self-government, and their 
political organizations equality with the original States in a Xational 
Union. Those who formulated the x\merican System found ways of 
carrying out the promises in spite of formidable obstacles. 

" Laws of the Territory of the United States Northwest of the Ohio. Cincin- 
nati. 1796. St. Clair's Papers, I, 312. 353. II, 354. William Maxwell, publisher of 
this code, was the owner and publisher of the "Centinel of the Xorthwest." the 
first newspaper of the territory. It began appearing at Cincinnati in 1793, and con- 
tinued for three vears. 

*' Laws of the Territory of the United States Northwest of the Ohio River, 
Cincinnati, 1798. Printed by Edmund Freeman. St. Clair Papers, II, 438. Free- 
man I'urchased the "Centinel of the Xorthwest" from William Maxwell in 1796, 
and changed its name to "Freeman'.s Journal." He continued to publish his 
newspaper in Cincinnati until he removed to Chillicothe where he sold it to the 
publishers of the Scioto Gazette. 

"'St. Clair Papers, II. 438-9. 

*> Cf. C. W. Alvord. The Mississippi Valley in British Politics. 



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014 571 652 4 



